First Sunday of Advent

First Day of Advent
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Rev. Michael Moffitt December 1st, 2024

                    “Restore Us Again O God” Isaiah 40:1-11

If you’re like me, you have had things happen in your life or the life of others that come to mind many years later. Some of those times is God  reminding us to not make the same mistake again, in other times it’s a reminder of a lesson learned.

This past week I was reminded of something that happened to me and my children almost 30 years ago. This event forever changed me, and the lesson learned still serves as a reminder 30 years later. The reminder is that God is always with us, even when we aren’t aware of him.

Teresa and I along with our children Amy, then 16 and Ben 14 went on vacation to Kure Beach, N.C.. The kids and I were out playing in the water and didn’t notice that we were drifting further out and to the right. Suddenly we all stepped off a shelf and found ourselves in water that was over our heads and whirling. I could hear my kids crying out to me as I returned to the surface. Ben was approximately 10 feet behind me, and Amy was 15-20 feet past me. I fought through the water and grabbed Ben as I heard Amy cry out, “Dad get over here!” I pulled Ben with me over to Amy and told her to grab his arm. By God’s grace I was able to get us to the shore where an old man was giving me the “stink eye” because he was trying to fish, and we weren’t helping him as we splashed about. As we struggled in the water we were crying for help, and no one responded. Not even the lifeguard who was busy trying to impress a group of teenage girls. He asked me as we passed by, “Were you guys having trouble out there?” I just glared at him and responded, “YOU THINK!” I was tempted to jerk him out of his chair, but I knew that me going to jail for severely damaging a teenage life guard would only make things worse. Don’t be concerned, that was an earlier of Mike Moffitt. God’s done some work in me since then.

The rest of that day and our vacation I couldn’t stop thinking about what could have happened. It was literally weeks before I was able to completely shake that awful feeling. What bothered me the most was that everything at that beach was in place in case of a situation like ours. The problem was that no one did what they should have done in that situation. Even the man who was fishing should have considered our lives as more important than catching a fish. The lifeguard had been trained to react to those situations and was getting paid to do just that. There was no excuse for him not coming to our aid. 

As I reflected on that I realized that there was one thing in place that worked flawlessly. God was still on his throne and his will was working as planned. However, for me there was more to the story. Over the next few weeks I kept thinking about my cousin Joel who 16 years earlier under similar circumstances had drowned at a beach just north of Kure Beach. He was 10 days older than me and was a good man, a very godly man. He had just graduated from UNCG and was preparing to get married in a few weeks. He was at the beach with his fiancé and her family as they celebrated his graduation, his new job, and the upcoming wedding. Why did God save me and my children but let Joel drown? It could be that he wanted me to save our children. Of course, I had been negligent by not paying attention to the fact that we were drifting into real danger. Maybe Joel did as well. Praise God for his mercy! This past week as I thought of this I was reminded of Psalm 69:1-2, “Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.” Just like the Psalmist who cried out to God for mercy, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was this same mercy that saved me and my children, as well as the mercy that brought my cousin Joel face to face with his Savior. As for me and the rest of the family it seemed that God took Joel home prematurely but in God’s sovereign will it was the appointed time.

What brought this event to my mind was the subject of drifting away and paying a heavy cost. Last week we begin by considering whether or not we have grown in our relationship with Jesus Christ after having gone through the seasons of the church year. As we start another year in the church calendar how will we re-focus on the word of God and pursue our relationship with him?

Today we continue our celebration of the Advent season. Advent is a celebration of the birth of the Christ child and the anticipation of the second coming of the Messiah to restore all things. The first two weeks we remember the promise of his second coming. We will see that the promise that Jesus will come again is most fully understood by the fact that God was faithful in sending him the first time.

Our passages this morning from Isaiah 40 and Psalm 85 are recalling God’s faithfulness in the past and asking him to act on behalf of his people once again. Let’s look again at Psalm 85:1–6,

“Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger. Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us! Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?”

The Psalmist, one of the sons of Korah looked back and remembered the faithfulness of God in leading the people of Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus and was asking him to do it again. The Psalmist doesn’t specify a particular time but perhaps is was while they were captive in Babylon. Last week we spoke of Israel calling out for God to restore them based on the relationship that they had with him as the Potter who had formed them and as the shepherd who watched over them as his sheep. We look back and remember how God was faithful to his people Israel and that should encourage us to look forward with anticipation to the coming of Christ. Last week we sang the Advent hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

“O come, O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appears. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

We sing this song as a reminder that God kept his word the first time. This enables us to believe that he will continue to be the God who keeps his word. One of the ways that we can be assured of this is by seeing the evidence from the scriptures of how God kept his promise.

This morning I want to briefly compare the words of comfort in Isaiah 40 with the realization of the promise fulfilled in our gospel reading from Mark 1:1–7. Let’s first consider the message from Isaiah 40:1–5,

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The previous 39 chapters of Isaiah certainly had passages of comfort and hope, but there was a strong tone of judgment and warning throughout the section. Now, beginning with Isaiah 40, the tone shifts to being predominantly full of comfort and blessing, full of the glory of God. Both Israel and Judah had drifted so far away from the ideals of the covenant that they became more evil and decadent than many of the pagan nations around them. 

Now God speaks through his prophet that he would one day restore all that was lost because he remembered the covenant promise that he had made to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David.

This word was also to be a comfort to those in the future who would be paying the price of Israel’s sins, even though they were in exile. God was sending them a message of hope and Isaiah is calling the godly to persevere in seeking the Lord, in trusting in his promise of a kingdom and in the coming of the King. God was encouraging them to be at peace in times of trouble and to respond to the message of the prophet with faith. This section begins with the command of God from the throne of Heaven—Comfort, comfort my people.

There is some disagreement as to who God is addressing. Some have suggested that he is addressing the court of Heaven and the angelic messengers while others suggest that he is addressing a group of prophets. Or it may be that the ambiguity is intentional, so that all who hear the command might take up the call to proclaim comfort to God’s people.  

In the scriptures whenever God’s issues a plural command it reveals the intensity of his desire, in this case for his message of comfort to be delivered. The message was initially directed by Isaiah to those of Israel living in Jerusalem and it was foretelling that because of their sins they would be sent into in exile in Babylon even though the prophecy was given between 100–150 years before they were sent into Babylon as a conquered people. They would not listen and repent but continued to live in rebellion to God and his commands. These words would later have been read by those who were living in captivity, their beloved Jerusalem had been destroyed and the temple was nothing but rubble. They no longer had their own king and God seemed to have forgotten them. The words of Isaiah 40 were meant to break through that despair and provide them with the comfort that their king was coming.

The promise of comfort was that the battle with their enemies and with God would be over, the price for their sin was considered paid for because an atonement had been made. They weren’t released from the price of their sins because they had somehow made atonement, but God had found another way. Another voice would cry out, perhaps a heavenly messenger speaking a word of comfort from the throne of God that a way would be made, a road was to be cleared out and all obstacles removed so the exiles could return across the desert from Babylon back to their beloved Jerusalem.

How would this happen? God was promising to make a way for them to return without difficulty or trials because a supernatural event was going to take place. When this did happen (see Ezra and Nehemiah) in 539 BC it was in fulfillment of this prophecy made long before, And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. It was God who moved on behalf of his people by changing the hearts of pagan kings and having them give favor to Israel. It is an amazing story of God’s mercy and sovereign will moving to accomplish all that he had purposed on behalf of his children.

The prophecy that the exiles saw fulfilled was only a foreshadowing of what God was pointing to. Even though Israel returned to Jerusalem in the time of Ezra, Nehemiah and Zerubbabel and the temple was re-built, the greatest part of the promise made in Isaiah 40 was yet to be fulfilled—the coming of the King.

In our gospel reading this morning we see the fulfillment of what Isaiah spoke about 650 years earlier. Let’s read again Mark 1:1–4,

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness, and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Mark did not waste any time in declaring the identity of Jesus Christ. He begins by declaring that this word was the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

Why was this such good news? Because Jesus was the fulfillment prophesied in Isaiah 40, the one foretold by Isaiah and now through a new prophet, John the Baptist. The road that was made straight was in preparation for the coming of the Son of God. God did exactly what he said he would and there was the proof in Jesus Christ. The faithful remnant had been promised that their sins would be atoned for, and this would be how that would come about. 

The glory of God had been revealed through the circumstances surrounding Israel being released from captivity and returning to Jerusalem but that was as nothing in comparison to what God would do through the coming of the Son of God. This was the fulfillment of Isaiah 40:5, The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken, but even this event did not fully fulfill the promise made through Isaiah but was only a partial fulfilling.

The fact that Jesus came in fulfillment of the promise made through Isaiah should give us confidence that God remembers his promises, but it’s the last part of the promise that gives us the assurance that he will come back again. Let’s read Isaiah 40:9–11,

“Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.”

Again, the herald is told to cry out the good news that God will release the captive from exile. When Isaiah prophesied this word from the Lord he most likely assumed that it spoke of Israel being restored to the promised land and the temple in Jerusalem and it did in part. However, God in his sovereign plan was pointing to an even greater release from exile. The King who was coming to restore all things was first going to remove all obstacles and make a straight path for the faithful to return to God, not merely in Jerusalem but in the coming of the New Jerusalem. It wasn’t just a promise to the nation of Israel but that all flesh would see the glory of God revealed. The Lord God, the promised King, would come with might because he is the warrior King. His glory would manifest itself when he powerfully subdues his enemies and tenderly delivers his people. He will gather them like a shepherd gathers his flock. He will carry them in his arms and gather them to his bosom. In other words, he will love them like only the master can.

The Psalmist declares these same hopes in Psalm 85:6–11,

“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly. Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky.”

This is what blissful harmony of life in covenant with God looks like: love, friendship, faithfulness, righteousness, and peace. The future relationship with God would join God’s blessings from heaven with the faithfulness of his people on earth. That’s what we are looking for with anticipation. In the meantime, we are to keep the command of God spoken from the throne of God and revealed through Isaiah the prophet, Comfort, Comfort my people. The king is coming, and we are to be the heralds proclaiming that he has made a straight path and a highway to peace with God and an atonement for sins. He has told us to be the ones to spread the good news that people no longer need to be in exile and bondage because he wants to set them free.

In closing I want to speak to another reason we should find great hope even in times of turmoil and persecution. Isaiah 40: 7-8 points us to the confidence we should find in the promises of God through his holy word. 

“The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
  surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades,
  but the word of our God will stand forever.”

Probably the greatest obstacle to belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and the only way to salvation is the opinion that the Bible is nothing, but a book written by men. To many, or likely most believe that at best it’s irrelevant or just an ancient document. 

God speaking through the prophet Isaiah assures us that his word can be trusted, as he alone is God and is quite able to protect and sustain his word. The word of our God has endured. It has survived centuries of manual transcription, of persecution, of ever-changing philosophies, of all kinds of critics, of neglect both in the pulpit and in the pew, of doubt and disbelief — and still, the word of our God stands forever. 

Author and apologist Josh McDowell in his seminal work, “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” writes “Written on material that perishes, having to be copied and recopied for hundreds of years before the invention of the printing press, did not diminish its style, correctness, nor existence. The Bible, compared with other ancient writings, has more manuscript evidence than any ten pieces of classical literature combined.”

 In A.D. 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian demanded that every copy of the Scriptures in the Roman Empire be burned. He failed, and 25 years later, the Roman Emperor Constantine commissioned a scholar named Eusebius to prepare 50 copies of the Bible at government expense.

Voltaire, the French skeptic, and infidel who died in 1778, once said that 100 years from his time, Christianity would be swept from existence and passed into history, and that the Bible would be a forgotten book. I love the irony of this because many years after Voltaire’s death, the Geneva Bible Society used his press and his house to produce stacks of Bibles.

The fact that the persecution of Christians is happening around the world is because the enemy of God is reacting to those who faithfully proclaim the word of God. That in itself is evidence of its veracity. So what does this have to do with us?

The command of God to his people has not changed one iota. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” Advent is the reminder that the Lord is coming and more than anything else this should be our comfort and encouragement that is to be shared with anyone and everyone. Let’s pray.